


Your Tragic Flaw Still Makes Me Wonder

by Krasimer



Series: Do Not Go Gentle [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Altered Mental States, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Derse Dreamers, Doc Scratch and others unknown are dicks, F/F, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Memory Alteration, Mentions of Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, Mentions of the Dolorosa - Freeform, Prospit Dreamers - Freeform, Semi-Canonical Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 09:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3482876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if everything you knew about your past was wrong? </p><p>Because your name is PORRIM MARYAM, and you have a suspicion that things are definitely not right in your memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Tragic Flaw Still Makes Me Wonder

Your name is PORRIM MARYAM, and you are quite sure that your memories are wrong.

That is not to say that you are wrong entirely. It is simply that several of your memories feel wrong. The words in them feel twisted, the landscapes altered. You know that some of the things seen within them are changed from what they should be.

It feels wrong to see Latula and Mituna holding each other close.

You do not know if you are the only one to think of this, to know the wrongness of the dream bubbles that are haunted by the lot of you. You do know that the journal Aranea carries about is not the original version of it. As the ancestor of young Vriska, she is still not who she is, the diary written in her own words rather than her older self's words.

In as many other words: She is writing from her perspective, not Mindfang's. She is writing about what she thinks occurred. 

You frown at yourself in the mirror, trying to remember the face you can almost see in your mind.

Someone with lines in their skin, narrowed eyes filled with a terrifying hatred. You remember being afraid and angry at the same time, Kankri lying on the ground next to you as you hissed at the someone. There had been the anger, and then there had been the end of your session as brought about by death of everyone playing the game.

The face you remember flickers between looking like a troll and looking like something else entirely.

After a few minutes, your head hurts from trying to forcefully recall, and you sigh, rubbing at your brow. The pain pulses in your think pan, and you could swear that it was trying to knock you out from intensity. 

_'Porrim- LOOK OUT!'_ a phantom voice calls out to you.

On reflex, you look over your shoulder, tensed in preparation for a fight. There is no one there, there never has been. You know this, you should be alright and able to understand this. The fight or flight reflex has never quite left you, even when backed into a corner and ripped apart.

...Where did that thought come from?

You look back into the mirror for a moment, tracing your fingers over your reflected jawline.

The troll in the mirror frowns, and you look away again, smoothing your hands down the front of your dress. The horrorterror whispers, meant to only be for the residents of Derse, have come to the forefront of your mind once more. Unlike what has been reported by the Derse dreamers, they sound afraid, as if they are begging you for help.

Or maybe they are warning you, pleading for you to run.

You have never been quite sure which it is. You are still unsure of whether or not you want to find out.

On the wall of your remembered hive, an out of place memory in the place you have settled in the dream bubbles, is a painting of someone that you have never met. Perhaps it is for the best that you do not meet her. She is, after all, someone whom you would be prone to falling into the rhapsodies of hero worship that Aranea is often the victim of. The Dolorosa, mother to the Signless, the Sufferer, died for the cause of bringing about change to the world.

An attempt to overthrow the caste system that ended in the death of almost all involved.

A valiant effort, to be sure, but you still have to wonder about her. Why had she chosen to go to her death over her version of Kankri? The memory that sticks in the back of your mind cries at you, calls for attention, but you push it away. There is little use in pain when you are dead, and you do not wish to dredge through long past memories any more for today.

You suppose you understand Aranea's attempts to write down the stories of Mindfang's life.

If she is simply seeking answers, the whys and the hows, then you can think of no better way than to research it and record what she observed. As an observer, however, she must understand something for herself, the simple fact that she was not who she was observing. They might share a name, and they might be similar in some ways, but there could be no other overlap.

The voices of the horrorterrors rise in pitch, and you feel a hand on your shoulder. You turn, hand outstretched in return, ready to damage to whoever is touching you.

"Porrim!" Aranea squeaks when your claws rise to her face, as if you're going to rip her dead-white eyes out. You stand there for a moment, and then your shoulders start shaking and you let your neck go limp, your chin buried in your cleavage as you put your hands to your face. You barely feel it when she pulls you closer, her hands on your back in a way that feels so familiar it hurts.

The memories you have of being alive contradict any familiarity, however, and that just makes you shake even more. There is something wrong with your mind, with your memories, and she might be the best one to ask.

"Aranea." you greet her quietly, your head now tucked against her neck. This close, you can see a faint scar on the skin. You cannot quite make out the shape of it, but you can see it. "If I might ask a favor of you?" You can feel her hands go tight on the back of your dress, but she still holds you.

There's a pause, an instinctual intake of breath as she strokes your hair. "Anything."

"I require your ability to look into my mind. If it is still possible for you to have that much control in the dream bubbles, I- I need you to look for mismatched edges." you swallow against the lump of fear in your throat and you curl your fingers in her dress. 

Aranea pulls back, settles you on a chair in front of your mirror, then kneels before you. Slowly, a hand rises to her temple, brushing aside the curled edge of black hair that rests there. "Porrim, what am I looking for?" she meets your eyes, searching. Her other hand rests on your knee, the skin to skin contact enough to ground you in reality as you know it.

You swallow again. "I do not know. Something that feels out of place."

Her eyes go wide, the blue flare of her telepathy swirling around her as she leans in closer to you. The hand on your knee is still there, and it keeps you from moving away, from trying to back away from the perceived threat.

Aranea is not a threat to you.

After a few minutes of searching, she gasps and throws herself backwards, her chest heaving as she whimpers. "I remember him!" she hisses, fangs bared at the wall, claws digging into the floor. "I remember him and I remember what he did to us and I remember why Meenah activated the Tumor!"

In the wake of her absence from your mind, you can see his face clearly now. A troll with gillslits on his neck, perfectly round white eyes, and a threatening smile. Mituna had been the first to be attacked, and Latula had rushed to her friend's side. 

You clutch at your chest, over your bloodpusher, and you try to stay calm as the memories wash over you. 

Kankri had leaped in front of you, had taken a blow to the chest, had fallen to the ground and gone horrifyingly still. Damara, in what seemed to you like an act of desperation, had convinced Meenah to blow up your world and end the lives of all involved. 

As the explosion had closed in around you, you heard someone saying something. You had heard the white eyed troll smugly explaining that he had to fix you, that he was there to tamper and change. _'Normally,'_ he had gone on, lifting your chin up as he thrust something sharp into your stomach. _'We don't care about any of you little insects. But this is a special job. I was told to ensure that this happened.'_

With a jolt, you pull yourself out of the memory, hands clasped together in your lap. Aranea is sitting up now, looking at you with wide eyes.

"I think he was a god." she says quietly. 

You nod, reaching for her. Despite the pain in your head subsiding, you can still feel the phantom echo of the knife through your skin. She takes your hands and you pull her close, slide to the floor with her in your lap. Burying your nose in her hair, you breathe the scent of her in, the coolness of her skin comforting instead of worrying.

On the chair you vacated sits a cloth wrapped bundle that you know was not there before.

You reach for it, pull it into the fray of your body wrapped around her, and you open it. The cloth is striped in your blood and hers, and inside it there is a cerulean necklace and a jade green hair clip. You pull the necklace on, admire the way it lays on your neck, and then you brush her hair back out of her face, until you have enough to pin back.

The clip suits her, works with her short hair instead of fighting to hold it.

You take a deep shuddering breath as you look at her, and you know that the two of you will have to talk, will have to work together to understand what has just happened. For now, you think as you pull her closer, you will lay here, content to absorb the memories you have regained.

**Author's Note:**

> So...
> 
> It's not quite Doc Scratch, but it is someone like him. I wanted to give a form to the gods that whisper to Rose, and I think that some of them are useful, some of them are evil, and some of them are willing to go along with the highest bidder.
> 
> Tell me what you think?


End file.
